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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293230">Top Secret</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic'>ProtoNeoRomantic</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Reid/JJ/Will OT3 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Criminal Minds (US TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>'ever notice how people only say that about bad stuff', (not the show the mental health issue), Abandonment Issues, Anxiety, Awkward Flirting, Birthday, Childhood Trauma, Developing Relationship, Dreams and Nightmares, Everything Happens for a Reason?, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, FBI, Fear of Discovery, Fear of Rejection, First Dates, Football, Gideon is unsure of Gideon, Girls with Guns, Hopes and Dreams, Hotch is unsure of Gideon, Human Nature, Intersex, JJ has an unusually high sex drive, JJ is good with guns, Killing, Leap of Faith, Lust, Making Out, Morgan has a problem with Gideon, Mutual Pining, Nonmonogamous Relationship, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Alternating, Parentification, Perfectionism, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Promiscuity, Referenced violence, Reid worships Gideon, Rejection, Romantic Tension, Secrets, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Tension, Shooting Guns, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Social Anxiety, Spencer Reid is not good with guns, The Washington Football Team, Unconventionality, What Doesn't Kill You Can Still Seriously Mess You Up, Workplace Relationship, arrested development - Freeform, built-in closet, conventionality, emotional age v chronological age, estranged family members, fear of mental illness, human sexuality, past sexual encounters, privacy, trying on everything you own, variations in sexual anatomy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-05-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 20:55:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,118</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27293230</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>JJ and Spencer are starting something special.  But it's not quite shaping up to be what Spencer might have expected.  And JJ makes it very clear that no one, especially the Team, can ever find out.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Derek Morgan/All the Single Ladies, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/David Rossi, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Spencer Reid, Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/minor and original male characters, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Reid/JJ/Will OT3 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992778</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. When Spencer Met JJ</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>“All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That’s in the nature of secrets.”—Corey Doctorrow</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>The Encyclopedia Galactica, in its chapter on Love states that it is far too complicated to define. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of love: "Avoid, if at all possible."<br/>             ~Douglas Adams</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time she saw him, it was a total accident. What caught her attention was the contrast between his large, potentially athletic, physicality and the almost demur way he carried himself. He was six feet if he was an inch, yet his overall presence was not only non-threatening, but acutely vulnerable.</p><p>His boyishly cute face, unruly mop of wavy hair, and please-don't-notice-me posture made her think of Tom Hanks' character from the movie <em>Big </em>in which he plays a thirteen-year-old in a grown man's body. Except that this guy seemed much more convincingly childlike. As if he needed to be cherished, protected, loved.</p><p>JJ hadn't even intended to go to the firing range that afternoon. But, after yet another long, tedious day of sifting through documents in the White Collar Division of the Richmond Field Office, she desperately needed to blow off the massive amount of steam that she could feel building towards and explosion inside her. Normally she would go for a run, but a day like today called for something more explosive, destructive. Like blowing holes in something, even if it was only a paper target.</p><p>She must have fired 200 rounds in an hour, reloading over and over. She practiced hitting different body parts: head, heart, gut, limbs, joints; more than half the time imaging they belonged to her boss. A couple of times, though, she imaged her target was David Rossi. This was not the career she had had in mind when his lecture had convinced her to join the Bureau.</p><p>After putting a dozen bullets in his imaginary brain, she felt a little better. She just had to be patient, that was all. You couldn't just walk in off the street and join the BAU. She hadn't expected that. Most of them had been with the Bureau at least 5-10 years, some a lot longer. And there were plenty of other units that did important work.</p><p>But White Collar? How was she supposed to make a difference from behind a desk? Granted, guys like Bernie Madoff could cause a world of trouble, in there own way; but she wasn't literally saving lives every day the way Rossi had been when he was chasing serial killers.</p><p>Of course, that was partly her own fault. Her degree in Journalism was a much bigger selling point for White Collar than for any other unit, she guessed. Which was what she got for going through four years of college not knowing what she wanted to do with her life; for choosing a major and coursework based on how conveniently she could fit everything around her Soccer schedule and still have a social life.</p><p>JJ emptied another clip into a target that she imagined to be her lack of forethought incarnate, holstered her weapon, and was turning to go when she noticed the tall, thin, sandy-haired guy standing two targets away with no one in between. He stood there, swinging his arms like a child and looking at the gun lying in front of him and the target beyond as if he were trying to get them to interact using only his mind before picking up the weapon and fumbling his way through loading it, as if he'd never seen such a gadget before.</p><p>When he saw JJ looking at him, he flushed as red as a beet, giving her a nervous no-teeth-showing smile and an odd little wave, as if he were a toddler heading off to his first day of preschool. JJ could not explain why she found this so endearing, but she did. It made her want to hold him in her arms and tell him everything was alright. And despite his dowdy choice in clothing, she got a clear enough impression of his body to imagine what holding him in her arms could lead to.</p><p>JJ flashed a bright, friendly smile of her own back at him. His response was not encouraging. The young man's brow wrinkled deeply, as if he were doing trigonometry in his head or something. Then, he turned his attention back to the target and began firing.</p><p>With a sigh, JJ, returned her ear protection to its rightful place and walked outside to feel the sunshine on her face. Even if the guy hadn't been as odd as he was attractive, there would have been no real point to catching his eye. Despite the fact that he looked closer to eighteen than the FBI's minimum hiring age of twenty-three, he was almost certainly an agent or he wouldn't be here.</p><p>JJ had a strict policy against dating other agents. No good could come of your co-workers knowing anything whatsoever about your sex life. Especially if they might not necessarily approve. Which, for a woman with as strong a sexual appetite as JJ had, seemed extremely likely. No one who had ever gotten to know that side of her had ever approved unless they were in a position to directly benefit. Even then, they could get pretty judgmental when the power of their 'love' didn't magically curtail her needs and desires.</p><p>So, every time she met an agent that she might otherwise have gone fore, JJ just had to keep reminding herself that it wasn't worth it. After all, guys she found attractive weren't exactly in short supply. She found most men attractive. The real issue was the issues they might have with certain parts of her. And the last thing she needed was for rumors to start flying around the bureau about <em>that</em>.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>Had she smiled at him? Spencer honestly wasn't sure. It had seemed like she was smiling at him. But <em>why </em>would a beautiful, sexy blonde woman whom he had never met in his life be smiling at him? She wouldn't. Especially when he hadn't even had the opportunity to say anything brilliant, or at all.</p><p>He was probably imaging it, he decided. Or rather, imaging that it meant something, other than the obligatory, uncomfortable acknowledgment of the fact that he had waved at her when she probably wasn't really so much looking at him as looking toward him in the first place.</p><p>Embarrassed, Spencer turned back to his target and started shooting. Flustered as he was, he only hit it two out of ten times, and one of those would have only taken off an ear. The other would have shattered someone's shoulder, which would have been fine if it hadn't been meant for their head.</p><p>His birthday was in two days. Twenty-three. The age he'd been waiting for half his life. The FBI age. His appointment had already been approved, thanks to Jason Gideon, who had pushed bureaucratic and even physical requirements out of his way and now expected him to start to work on Monday. And his first act as an FBI agent was going to be failing his firearms qualification.</p><p>Twenty-three. Still so far from out of the woods mental health wise. If Agent Beautiful really had been smiling at him and he had somehow found the courage to go up and talk to her, ask her out even; it's not like it could have gone anywhere. Not once she knew there was a one in ten chance that within the next five years or so his psyche was going to crack like an egg. Probably the first time he was placed in an actual life-or-death situation in the field. Possibly next week when he failed his firearms qualification</p><p>Spencer practiced shooting a few more times and got a little better, but there was no way he was going to get good enough fast enough at this rate. He was going to have to ask for help. That wasn't something he was good at. He'd been solving his own problems for thirteen years now, because otherwise they wouldn't have gotten solved.</p><p>Then again, he realized, maybe not all of his problems were getting solved. Despite years of patiently waiting to grow out of his awkwardness in talking to girls, as everyone had assured him he would, here he was about to turn twenty-three and still not able to manage something as simple as working out whether or not a woman was smiling at him or what he was supposed to do if she was.</p><p>So okay. He needed help. He got in the elevator and headed up to the BAU area, which Gideon had showed him around a couple of times now. It was nearly 7:00, but the whole team was still there, and none of them showing any sign of getting ready to leave.</p><p>Maybe they didn't have any more luck with women than he did, Spencer thought. Which was the first time he noticed in all the interviews and introductions he'd had with them that the profiling team was made up entirely of men. Of course, for the most part, so were the unsubs.</p><p>Men hunting men. It sounded sort of homoerotic if you thought about it. Maybe just don't think about it then, Spencer decided.</p><p>“I didn't think you were starting till next week,” said a deep male voice behind him, dripping with gravitas. Spencer whirled around to find SSA Hotchner standing behind him, trying not to smile at his startled expression.</p><p>“Oh, Uh... Age—Um Hotch?” Spencer stammered, remembering what his soon-to-be teammate preferred to be called.</p><p>“What is it?” Hotch asked, his tone and expression softening with genuine concern.</p><p>In that moment, Hotch was so much the way Spencer might have imaged a big brother to be that for a fraction of a second he thought about telling him what had happened, or failed to happen, with the young woman at the shooting range and asking for his advice. Instead he said, “I think I could use some assistance with my firearms qualification.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. For a Reason</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>"Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous."<br/>~somebody, but probably not Einstein</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What's this, Hotch?” Morgan demanded, waving what was clearly a print out of the unit's new job posting in front of his face.</p><p>“It's job posting,” Aaron answered, his face completely impassive, his voice level.</p><p>“I know it's a job posting, Hotch,” Morgan all but shouted, frustration bordering on indignation dripping from every word. “What I want to know is why, when we've just lost three of our most experienced profilers, and supposedly don't have the budget to replace them, we suddenly need a 'press liaison' badly enough for you to go over Strauss's head to the Director and get an exception to the hiring freeze.”</p><p>“We didn't lose Gideon,” Hotch pointed out his voice still calm but his tone heavier somehow, containing a subtle warning in the general direction of maintaining decorum and respecting the chain of command. “He's just taking some time off.”</p><p>Morgan didn't roll his eyes or sigh in exasperation, but he wanted to. They both knew Jason Gideon would never set foot in this office again. Boston had destroyed him, just as surely as it had Haley, and Ngo, and those four agents from the Boston field office. His body might not have been blown to pieces, but his spirit definitely had. Hell, he was barely up to teaching in his condition, but whatever. Morgan's point still stood regardless of any of that.</p><p>“Two profilers then,” he conceded aloud. “Whatever. Budget shortfall or not, we should be replacing at least one of them.”</p><p>“We will,” Hotch assured him. “Just not this quarter. In the meantime, we both know that the administrative side of the Unit Chief's job has gotten to be too much for one person on top of actual profiling duties, and communications is a big part of that. We need to be able to speak to the press and the public with one, unified voice, without pulling an experienced profiler out of the field full time to do it. Also, we've known for a long time that we needed a more systematic approach to intake. And it can't hurt our effectiveness to have someone on the team with real expertise in public relations.</p><p>“Besides,” Hotch pointed out patiently, seeing that Morgan still wasn't convinced, “a press liaison falls under the category of Media Specialist, which starts at a pay grade of GS-7. That's a much easier sell on the budget side, and its the best I can do right now. We're all just going to have to work with what we've got. Alright?”</p><p>“Alright,” Morgan admitted, “ I guess it would be nice not to have to spend so much time explaining things to reporters and family members when we could be working on the profiles.” He said that, because that was what he was clearly supposed to say. Hotch had made it clear that his mind was made up, and he was the Unit Chief, or as he kept oh so modestly insisting, <em>Interim</em> Unit Chief.</p><p>“Just what we need,” he complained to his friend, Deshawn Harris from Counter-Terrorism, over a couple of beers later that night, “<em>Another </em>twenty-three-year-old kid with a mountain of on-paper 'expertise' and exactly zero experience.”</p><p>Deshawn laughed softly. He was always telling Morgan not to take everything so seriously, and he was a big believer in taking his own advise. “And here I thought you were starting to warn up to this 'Dr. Reid' character.”</p><p>“Don't have a problem with Reid,” Derek clarified impatiently. “Whatever else you can say about him, dude is off-the-chart smart. But that doesn't change the fact that the Team has gone from seventy years of combined experience to twenty overnight. We don't need any more kids just learning the ropes. We need someone who knows what he's doing.”</p><p>“Like Jason Gideon?” Deshawn teased with a slight smile.</p><p>“Like Max Ryan or Katie Cole,” Morgan countered, his tone remaining just as strident. “But he's off chasing dollar signs, trying to be the next David Rossi, and she'd rather sit at her computer all day cyber-flirting with pedophiles.”</p><p>“Alright, now we've come back around to where we started this conversation,” Agent Harris admonished him mildly. “I think it's time to let go and let Hotch, which is the only upside to not being Unit Chief, so enjoy it while you can. Who knows, maybe it's like they say, 'everything happens for a reason' and something good will come out of this.”</p><p>“Yeah, maybe,” Morgan replied, diplomatically if a bit skeptically. “Whatever, let's have another round on me and talk about not-work for a while.”</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>When JJ sat down at her desk Monday morning and found that her computer already booted up and open to the USAJobs website, she was less than surprised to find her boss's latest 'subtle hint' that she might be a 'better fit' in a different department. He didn't like the way she did her job, especially the part where she had ideas, showed initiative, sometimes knew things he didn't, and occasionally tried to tactfully point out when he might be able to find a more productive way of approaching a situation or task. With a light touch rather than a sledge hammer, for example.</p><p>But her actual job performance, including her inability to hide the fact that she found said job tedious and barely worth doing, was only a tiny fraction of what made JJ a 'bad fit' for the White Collar Division. Mainly it was the fact that she didn't satisfy her boss's curiosity by telling him intimate details of her personal life as everyone else in the office was more or less compelled to do. She also didn't fluff up his ego by responding in kind to what he called 'being friendly' and the rest of the English-speaking world called 'flirting'.</p><p>JJ sighed. It would be nice to work with people who actually were friendly, she imagined, to have at least one or two real friends in this building full of acquaintances. Friends like the one's she had made on her soccer teams in high school and again in college. Not only people she could count on, but people who needed <em>her</em> and appreciated what she had to give, on and off the field, so to speak, in exactly the way the White Collar Division so clearly did not.</p><p>Oh well. Fantasy futures aside, it was time to start another day and earn another dollar. JJ turned her attention back to her screen, intending to close the browser before His Smarminess could slink around behind her to watch her react to his latest 'joke'. But it wasn't just open to the home screen as she'd expected. There was a particular listing pulled up. A new position had just been created, and more importantly funded. They were looking for a Media Specialist and Communications Liaison to join the BAU.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Her</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.<br/>~Benjamin Franklin</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>JJ must have changed her clothes five times. Perfect. Everything had to be perfect, and nothing was. Worse, she had a little too much help in the form of an active audience, which was making her even more self-conscious and indecisive.</p><p>“Would you stop that already?” Hal begged. “You look great. You always look great. If you were any hotter, you'd catch your whole building on fire, and then you'd have to follow me home to New York and beg me for a place to stay.”</p><p>JJ deftly ignored that part of Hal's 'compliment' that was an especially thinly veiled plea for her to abandon her own life and take up residence in his. It was irritating that he couldn't take two years of point-blank refusals as a hint; probably because she kept sleeping with him 'one more time', but it was also beside the point right now. “I don't want to look 'hot',” she tried again to explain, “I want to look professional.”</p><p>“You do...” Hal insisted, but the way he was eyeing the very slight cleavage at the top of her sharp, new Navy Blue pants suit made her wonder if she should wear a turtleneck instead. Sure enough, Hal sidled around behind her at the mirror and made a grab for her left breast while he distracted her by kissing her neck. “... but can I help it if you look like a very hot professional?”</p><p>JJ felt that unmistakable warm, wet, tingly feeling in all the old familiar places. She felt <em>It</em> stirring yet again, already. But she shrugged out of Hal's embrace, not only resisting temptation, but concealing it. Maybe she should wear the turtle neck with the suit. Then no one would be able to see her cleavage or her hard nipples and have to wonder if she was really walking around turned on all day or just cold.</p><p>“Come on Jen,” Hal begged/scolded, knowing damn well she hated being called that, as if they were a couple, the kind with little pet names and future plan to share a life together, “one more quick one for the road. You can be five minutes late.”</p><p>“Hal,” she replied shortly, starting to get truly irritated now, “I can't be five minutes late; it's a job interview.”</p><p>Hal deflated with a sigh. “Well you're going to be late anyway,” he pointed out crossly, “if you change you clothes one more time.” JJ glanced over at the alarm clock next to her wreck of a thoroughly unmade bed and cursed prolifically. “Damn,” Hal countered, striving for a lighter tone, reaching for her again, desperately trying to cling to something that was never there, “you kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”</p><p>JJ dodged him, physically and verbally, stomped into the nearest pair of shoes, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door. “Lock up on your way out,” she reminded Hal over her shoulder. She wanted to add, 'and leave the key,' but there was no telling what kind of tantrum that would bring about, and as Hal himself had pointed out, she did <em>not</em> have time.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>“Hey Reid,” Morgan's voice and simultaneous elbow to the ribs broke Spencer's concentration, nearly causing him to spill coffee all over the still physically blank crossword puzzle he'd just finished completing in his head. “Check her out.”</p><p>Slightly embarrassed by the shear fact that Morgan, by tone of voice if nothing else, had implied that they were two sexual beings who might be mutually interested in a third, Spencer, none-the-less, helplessly, looked. Morgan was usually a pretty good judge of these things. And Spencer was as susceptible as any normal, healthy, not-predatory-at-all adult male to seeking visual stimuli to be filed away for later sexual arousal and gratification regardless of whether the object of his scrutiny or his mother would have approved.</p><p>When he saw the slim, pretty young blonde woman standing self-consciously outside Hotch's/Gideon's office on the far side of the bullpen, fussing with her clothes as she waited for the applicant ahead of her to complete his interview, Spencer actually did drop his coffee. Not because because the pale peach blouse beneath her cut-to-be permanently-open Navy Blue jacket was much too close to the color of her flesh and draped and clung in such a way as to clearly explain why she had gotten Morgan's undivided attention. Nor because the way she kept trying to reposition her neckline, only to be defeated by gravity again and again, inevitably drew the eye of every man in the room to exactly what she was afraid of revealing. But because it was <em>her</em>.</p><p>“Hey, what the hell, man?!?” Morgan demanded, as he took a quick step back to dodge the ceramic shrapnel and (less successfully) the burst of hot coffee that spattered his shoes, socks and the cuff of one pant leg. Mortified, Spencer babbled his profound and sincere apologies as he quite literally tripped over himself and Morgan, knocking two more mugs off the counter where he'd grabbed a roll of paper towels in his mad dash to clean up.</p><p>For a moment, Spencer was frozen, not knowing whether to move forward with what he was beginning to realize was a futile attempt to 'undo' what had already happened to Morgan's outfit or to go back for the mercifully empty cups he'd just shattered. His head was too full of her to think. Too horrified that she was watching, or worse, not watching. That he was now an idiot to her, or invisible. Either way he was too afraid to look.</p><p>It took at least a full minute for his legendary brain to figure out that what he really should be doing was mopping up the spreading puddle of coffee in the doorway between the break room and the large, open room that housed the bullpen. By that time, Morgan had already stepped over the mess and gone to change into a clean suit from his go bag. That was better, being alone enough with the mess that he could pretend he didn't have an audience as long as he didn't look up.</p><p>“Need a hand?” asked a pleasant, friendly, but slightly amused female voice from the doorway. Spenser's stomach tightened. He knew, even before he looked, who it had to be. And sure enough, it was <em>her</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Funny How the Earth Never Opens Up and Swallows You When You Want it to</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Fate is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.<br/>~Publilius Syrus</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“So what did you say,” Morgan persisted, still not getting it.</p><p>“Nothing,” Spencer repeated. “All I could do was nod.”</p><p>Morgan shook his head. “Man, seriously? You've been talking about Gun Girl for what, four months now? You finally get to meet her again, face to face, perfect excuse, don't even have to make up something to talk about, and all you can do is nod?”</p><p>Spenser was incredulous at Morgan's incredulity. <em>How</em> was he not seeing the problem? “How could I talk to her in the middle of... of... that! It was humiliating!”</p><p>“Common, Man,” Morgan countered skeptically, using his what-is-this-really-about tone, the one he used when he thought you were overreacting to something that wasn't a big deal because it wasn't a big deal to him. “You dropped a cup of coffee. It happens. It's not like you split your pants and you were standing there with your ass hanging out.”</p><p>“No, it is!” Spencer tried to explain. “It is like that. It's exactly like that. Rarity of rarities, opportunity of opportunities; I actually do get a second chance to make a first impression, and I'm still the klutzy jerk who can't talk, walk, or shoot straight.”</p><p>Morgan's tone softened a little, but there was still a slightly smug, mildly amused tinge to his voice, “Okay, but now, you do realize at this point you're using the results of your reaction to justify your reaction. You couldn't say anything because you were so embarrassed by the fact that you couldn't say anything?”</p><p>“I'm aware of that, yes,” Spencer admitted, looking down at his shoes, sounding a little sullen even in his own ears, said ears still flushed bright pink with embarrassment hours later. Mercifully, Morgan had waited to question him about the whole disastrous mess until they were alone on the tarmac, waiting for the others to arrive and board the plane to head for their latest crime scene out in L.A.</p><p>At least he had been spared that much embarrassment, but still... Spencer knew what he was trying to say, but it was so hard to communicate it to someone who was so... Morgan. “You, you didn't see the way she looked at me,” he persisted. “She didn't even laugh or get annoyed or scowl at me. She—she was pitying me! No worse, she was <em>concerned</em>, like she was my mom, or something.”</p><p>Morgan did chuckle just a little bit then, which Spencer resented only slightly, knowing the other agent wasn't really to blame. His account of his fateful encounter with the beautiful, articulate, and lethally skilled young woman whom he still knew only as Gun Girl sounded ridiculous. It had <em>been</em> ridiculous. He was acutely aware of that.</p><p>“Okay,” Morgan couldn't resist pointing out, “For the rerecord it was you who brought up the mom angle.”</p><p>“Ah,” Spencer parried in his own defense, conjuring up a bit of a smirk himself, weirdly comforted by Morgan's genuinely friendly ribbing and the underlying presumption of camaraderie it signified, not to mention grateful for the chance to steer the topic to literally anything else. “So we're lifting the ban on intrateam profiling. Then this is a great opportunity to delve into why you feel the need to imitate the behavior of Lord Byron in your relationships with women.”</p><p>Morgan just smiled and shook his head. “Only you would bring up the dating habits of an eighteenth century poet in casual conversation, Dr. Reid.”</p><p>“Ah, he's actually a nineteenth century, late romantic poet,” Spenser couldn't help correcting, “But more to the point, how is it that I saw you leaving the bar last night with Denise Akland from Payroll Records, but Agent Maya Wells from the Organized Crime Unit dropped you off at work this morning.”</p><p>Morgan's smile was shameless now. His eyes twinkled. “Uh, that's because Denise works a 4-40 and has to be in bed by 11:00, but Maya doesn't get through kicking ass and taking names until well after midnight. And that, my young friend, is a little thing we payers call perfect timing.”</p><p>Spencer opened his mouth to say that, yes, he understood the <em>how </em>of hooking up with two women in one night... sort of... if you were as attractive and confident as Morgan anyway; but that it was the <em>why</em> that was actually in question. He thought better of it. Sometimes a dandy is just a dandy, but thanks to the mixed blessing of his extensive training and growing experience as a profiler, Spencer realized there might be something deep under that rock that didn't need poking at. He had set out to steer the conversation <em>away </em>from the awkward and overly personal, after all.</p><p>“This is everyone, isn't it?” Hotch asked and answered, coming up behind them. He sounded almost apologetic.</p><p>“Yeah, I guess it is,” Morgan agreed, deflating a little. Then brightening, he added, as they proceeded to board the jet, “Unless you want Gun Girl to come with us, see how she does in the field?”</p><p>All the color drained from Spencer's face, but Hotch didn't seem to notice. His brow furrowed. “Gun Girl?” he asked, seeming genuinely puzzled, “Is that one of Garcia's weird pet names for herself?”</p><p>Spencer laughed at the very thought. “Not even if it was a tranquilizer gun.” No one responded to that. He was already out of step with the conversation that continued between Morgan and Hotch as they buckled in and prepared for takeoff.</p><p>“The blonde girl,” Morgan clarified. “The last one you interviewed for that Press Liaison thing. She's an old friend of Reid's from the firing range, isn't she buddy?”</p><p>All of the color came flooding back to Reid's face with a vengeance. Hotch looked from one to the other of his teammates and cocked his head slightly. “There's something here that I'm not getting,” he informed them seriously.</p><p>Morgan opened his mouth to make some clever comment, but Spencer preempted him, knowing that in his current state of mind, he was not likely to find the threatened 'joke' the least bit funny. “I met a girl—er—woman—female—agent—FBI agent—person at the gun range,” he blurted out, adding in the same breath, “It was months and months ago and you could barely say we met, see we didn't actually so much meet as see each other handl—ah—firing our weapons, our guns? So, 'Gun Girl', but then she applied for the new job and I spilled the coffee which she helped clean up, so that was that. But anyway, I hear our favorite serial killer has left us another victim, Hotch, what do we have on that.”</p><p>Hotch tried and failed to keep a straight face, but at least he didn't laugh out loud. “Alright,” he agreed, and opened up the file in front of him. Less than a minute in, the grim tale of the life and death of Lana Cooper wiped the smile off even agent Morgan's face.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>JJ was not expecting to get a call that night. Normally, it takes a while to hear back from a Federal Civil Service job interview, even for an internal hire. Either the fix is in and you already know you're getting the job, or they interview literally everyone who sent in a resume meeting the minimum qualifications. Usually it's both, and unless you're the chosen one, you never know it was hopeless until after.</p><p>There was no reason to think that her suddenly ringing phone, which lay somewhere in the living room or kitchen of Jeremy's apartment along with her purse and most of her clothes, represented an urgent or emergent situation of any kind. Her day had been stressful as all fuck, and the only emergency she was worried about at that moment was the three alarm fire in her panties that desperately needed to be put out.</p><p>“Just let it ring,” JJ whispered against Jeremy's throat, once again turning off the bedside lamp that he had just turned back on for the second time. Eager to get back to business, she nibbled teasingly at his throat even as she moved her hands much more purposefully inside his boxer shorts, his only as yet undiscarded article of clothing, stroking his half hard cock with one while she cradled his balls in the other.</p><p>The equipment was not particularly impressive, a condition which she knew from recent experience would be only slightly improved by full engorgement, but tonight she was feeling far from particular. But apparently, Jeremy was. Heaving a mighty sigh, he pulled away from her in that oh-so-familiar way.</p><p>With an inward sigh of her own, JJ reluctantly but immediately release her hold on his genitals, turned the lamp on herself, and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed, preparing to go through yet another iteration of the same conversation she'd been having over and over since she was sixteen years old. At least a third of her encounters/flings/relationships/whatever ended this way. You'd think at some point it would start to feel a little less like that one recurring dream where she was being led naked through the streets of her home town while everyone she knew pointed and laughed.</p><p>But this time around was actually worse than she'd anticipated. Jeremy got strait to the point, not even bothering with the usual polite protestations of 'it's not you it's me'. “Look, I'm sorry, and I don't want to hurt your feelings, but, I just can't do this again!” he blurted out, actually sounding far more defensive of his own feelings than worried about hurting hers.</p><p>“And I know you're a girl, and you have a cunt, which smells really nice by-the-way, and that's great and everything,” he continued, his speech becoming even more rapid and pressured, “And I know it's not your fault, but I just can't get used to that <em>thing</em>. Your 'clit' or whatever you want to call it, looks like a penis to me! I mean like it's half as big as mine, and last time it kept rubbing against me and it's weird and confusing, and it just really creeps me out!”</p><p>Jeremy finally took a breath, seeming relieved to have gotten that off his chest, and added, with no discernible embarrassment whatsoever. “You know, like, no offense or anything.” And then he just sat there. Looking at her. As if he though she was supposed to give some kind of rebuttal. Probably he wanted her to say that there was no offense taken and that she still thought of him as a really good, caring person whose mother should be proud of him.</p><p>There were actually a lot of things JJ could have said, running the gamut from 'you could have just said no in the first place' to 'go fuck yourself' or even 'oh, honey, it's bigger than yours.' But at that moment trying to speak would have triggered angry, frustrated tears that she had no interest in having to explain. Instead, she took a deep steadying breath, gathered up her clothes and her dignity and left.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. We Have to Quit Meeting Like This</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I can resist anything except temptation.<br/>~Oscar Wilde</p>
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    <p>Just shake it off, JJ repeated to herself all the way to the elevator and half way down to the lobby, invoking the sage advise of coaches everywhere. It was what it was. There was no point curling in a ball and crying about it. No point punching holes in walls about it either. She was a little more than most guys bargained for, and even when they had already said that was fine, they had a right to change their minds, and that was all there was to it.</p><p>What she really needed to do was regroup. Get right back out there and try to salvage her evening. Get her buzz on and dance off some excess energy if nothing else. Half way out the front door of Jeremy's building, she pulled out her phone to check the time and assess what her options were.</p><p>And there they were. Two missed calls. Same number. FBI prefix. 10:42 and 10:55 pm. Urgent enough for a second attempt, even at this time of night. Which was now 11:09. Shit.</p><p>She didn't immediately recognize the number. Which probably meant it was someone somewhere above her boss's boss. Calling twice. In the middle of the night. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!</p><p>JJ sat down in her car, took a deep breath, and reminded herself that she had done nothing wrong. She wasn't expected to be available 24 hours a day. And she was calling back less than half an hour after the first call. No one could reasonably expect more than that. She would have dialed right then, except that there was a voicemail at the time of the second call.</p><p>When she heard the deep, serious voice of SSA Aaron Hotchner played back to her, JJ was even more surprised, but no longer confused. Upon a moment's reflection, she laughed out loud with relief. The job was hers, he said, in a nut shall, provided she could get on a plane to California tonight and come rescue his beleaguered band of profilers from the relentless onslaught of the Southern California Press.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>David watched her from across the hotel lobby, sipping his morning coffee and idly appreciating her like art, waiting for Aaron to join him and brief him on the so-called 'womb raider's' latest victim. She was young and slim, blonde and beautiful. She looked like L.A. but moved like New York, or Capital Hill maybe. Her strides were long and purposeful. Businesslike. Confident.</p><p>There was an alert, almost hungry energy about her although her rumpled pants suit and less than perfectly maintained hair and makeup, especially at this time of the morning, suggested she had not slept last night. Or perhaps she had simply slept in her clothes and makeup, on an overnight flight for example. She certainly seemed to have some urgent business going on that would have justified flying straight through the night.</p><p>Then again, she might have only been in a hurry to get checked in so that she could finally rest from her travels. Her smile when the desk clerk handed her the key card was as much relieved as it was radiant. She made a beeline for the elevator, seeming to confirm this assessment. There was something about the bounce in her step though that made him wonder if she was actually about to get any rest or if someone was already waiting for her upstairs.</p><p>“Dave, good morning,” Aaron Hotchner's voice drew his attention away from the girl's retreating, heart-shaped backside and back to his own urgent business. “Thank you for meeting me on such short notice.”</p><p>“Every time I try to get out,” David Rossi teased, determined to be a good sport in spite of actually resenting the intrusion into his life of leisure just a bit, “they pull me back in.” But his smile was genuine as he half rose to accept Aaron's proffered handshake before nodding to the acting BAU Unit Chief, who he still couldn't help thinking of as the 'new kid' on the team, to sit down across from him at the tiny glass table he had staked out for the both of them.</p><p>“So they got you too,” Dave observed, indicating the Beanery cup in Aaron's hand, which matched the one he himself was holding, having been driven by circumstances to settle for the unimpressive offerings of that trendy, ubiquitous chain lest he be forced to face the day uncaffeinated after having lost half a nights sleep—not for the first time—to this seemingly equally unavoidable unsub.</p><p>Aaron smiled affably and nodded, “resistance is futile” he acknowledged with just a hint of mirth in his voice. Instantly, he became gravely serious again. “We need your help, Dave.”</p><p>And to that there could be no answer other than, “Of Course, Hotch. What can I do?”</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>The second JJ got to her room, she hopped in the shower and gave every part of her body a brisk, businesslike lather-rince-repeat before quickly reapplying her makeup and donning the gray pinstriped skirt suit from her hurriedly packed carry-on bag. At least three times she carefully felt her lower face, neck, and arms to remind herself that they did not need a quick touch-up shave the way they always used to in the morning before she had gotten herself on a regular regimen of scheduled electrolysis.</p><p>That was just nerves she reminded herself. An old, no longer rational anxiety stirred up by her current state of uncertainty about her new roll in the BAU. “You're a beautiful woman,” she reminded her reflection in the still slightly steamy bathroom mirror before heading down to the lobby to meet up with SSA Hotchner. “No one can tell.”</p><p>It only took JJ a moment to pick out Hotchner's face and tie among the sea of blonder, tanner, less buttoned down, and much less chiseled-from-granite-looking Californians and tourists in the crowed lobby. She lengthened her stride, and turned up the wattage on her smile as she approached, ready to dive into the reality of doing her new job and escape from agony of imagining all of the far-fetched ways in which it could go wrong.</p><p>The fact that he didn't have to whole team with him, that at least she didn't have to navigate another awkward meeting with the adorkably tongue-tied Dr. Reid in front of them, helped. But when she got a good look at the older, equally handsome, and much more California-compatible guy sitting across from him, she stopped short. Of all the retired federal agents in all the hotel lobbies in all the world, of course, it was David Rossi, the only person associated with the bureau with whom she had shared more than a handshake before applying to the academe and taking her 'no agents' vow.</p><p>Panic squeezed her chest, and for a fraction of a second she considered turning on her heels and going right back upstairs. But even if the idea hadn't been absurd in itself, it was too late. Hotchner was already smiling and waiving her over. Without much of a choice, JJ straightened her spine and walked over to greet them. If Rossi recognized her, he didn't show it, and she gratefully took the opportunity to introduce herself as if they had never met.</p><p>It was a relief when, after briefly concluding the thoughts on the case that he had just been sharing with Agent Hotchner, David politely took his leave and let the two of them get down to talking media strategy. And if there was a twinkle of amusement in his eye when he nodded graciously to JJ and said that it had been his pleasure to meet her, she preferred to imagine that she was imaging it.</p><p>Just the thought that Rossi might have acknowledged their brief but intense acquaintance to her new boss, coupled with the helpless desire with which she watched him walk away, knowing very well what he could have done to help ease the agony of sexual frustration that she had been feeling ever sense unexpectedly bumping into Reid yesterday made her realize that having to continually deny and suppress the clearly mutual though obviously doomed attraction she shared with the young doctor was going to make this new job harder than she thought.</p>
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<a name="section0006"><h2>6. She Wants to be Something to Me but It Isn't My Mother</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”<br/>~ J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan</p>
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    <p>It was one of those conversations you try not to overhear. Or at least...well... you try to try not to overhear. Penelope was minding her own business, just getting her coffee like always. Could she help it if Morgan and Reid were standing three feet away from her having what should have been a private conversation about their newest team member? Besides, after six weeks of holding down the fort here while the rest of the team essentially worked out of the L.A. field office, she was jonesing hard for any tidbit of gossip she could get.</p><p>“I think you're just reading too much in to it,” Reid was insisting miserably. “She's just being, you know, friendly and helpful. She's a nice person, that's all.”</p><p>“Riiiiight,” Morgan replied with a grin, “And it just so happens that when she feels like being a little <em>extra</em> nice (saving a seat, sharing her umbrella, bringing somebody one of those frothy coffee drinks just 'cause) it just happens to always be to you.”</p><p>Reid shrugged his lanky shoulders, looking mildly embarrassed. “That happens to me all the time,” he pointed out. “Even you do it. I think I bring out the mom in people.” To be perfectly honest, that was Penelope's assessment as well, but apparently not everyone was convinced.</p><p>Derek Morgan laughed and shook his head. “She watches you walk away from her, kid. Every single time. And she's not just watching that dust-mop on your head bounce either.”</p><p>Penelope involuntarily wrinkled up her nose a little at the thought of anyone getting their motor running by watching the back side of Reid moving in any way whatsoever. He was cute, and sweet, and lovable, the way children and puppies are; not sexy-monkey-lovable like an actual man. I mean... she supposed there was a girl out there for him somewhere. She hoped so. Lord knows everyone needs a little love in this life. But thinking about the mechanics of it was just... icky, like writing porn about baby seals.</p><p>Apparently, even Reid kind of thought so, because he flushed bright red as he raised his hand to his hair self-consciously. Focusing on the other half of what Derek had just said, too mortified to comment on his main theme, he explained, “My mom always says, if you keep cutting it, it just keeps growing back. If you don't cut it until it bothers you, you only have to do it three or four times a year.”</p><p>That was a classic Reid maneuver Penelope had noticed over the months that she'd known him, and a mutual acquaintance or two from CalTech had confirmed the same observation. In the rare event that he didn't have an adequate response to the question on the table, he would respond to literally anything else in the general vicinity of the conversation instead and hope that no one noticed.</p><p>Morgan, who must have realized the same thing, laughed gently, “Alright, kid,” he grinned, finally showing mercy, “Have it your way. She's just a friend and a colleague. Hey, Babygirl,” he added, looking past Reid's shoulder, causing Penelope to snap to attention, “You gonna get yourself some coffee or is standing there staring at your empty cup some new kind of zen contemplation thing?”</p><p>A wide smile spread across Penelope's face. God she had missed this! “You know I'm holdin' out for my Hot Chocolate,” she teased. They traded a little more banter back and forth while Reid, clearly glad to be out of the line of fire, quickly filled his cup and left.</p><p>At some point the conversation ran it's course and Penelope found herself heading back to her lair with a full coffee cup and no memory of the actual process of filling it. It didn't matter. Just having Derek back, being able to look into his eyes when he called her 'Babygirl', had already made her feel bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and thoroughly warm inside.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>“You're awfully quiet,” Gideon observed, looking across the chessboard at his young friend, “something on your mind?” It was a warm, clear day in early Summer, and the city was not yet sweltering as it would be in just a couple of weeks. In deference to his psychiatrists' advice to 'get out and enjoy the sunshine' instead of spending all his non-working hours alone in the snug safety of his apartment, he had agreed to play Reid on the National Mall that Saturday afternoon instead of in his office as usual.</p><p>Reid didn't answer him right away. Instead, he shrugged and continued staring at the board, brows knitted, as if he were trying to rearrange the pieces with his brain, to cause previous moves to unhappen. “We missed the cherry blossoms,” he said after a while, shifting the position of his Queen's knight pawn in a way he clearly hoped to pass off as a pacing move with incidental defensive value rather than an integral part of his offensive strategy. “They were barely starting to open when we left for L.A. Now they're long gone.”</p><p>That was Reid's way deflecting attention away from whatever it was that was bothering him. Coming from most people, that would mean that he didn't want to be pushed on the subject, that he preferred to keep his own counsel. Gideon, knew better. The furtive, searching looks Reid kept giving him whenever he thought he wasn't looking, the way he had opened his mouth just a bit then quickly closed it again several times, said that he was deeply troubled and desperate for advice. He just didn't know how to ask anyone for anything, not because he was too proud, but because he could never quite believe he deserved anyone's help or attention.</p><p>Gideon moved to block the discovered attack on his bishop that Reid was so clearly trying to set up. “I didn't know you were such a fan of cherry blossoms,” he said just a shade ironically, moving as carefully with Reid off the chessboard as he was moving against him within the game.</p><p>Gideon waited patiently while the kid rattled off an impressive but irrelevant collection of trivia and statistics about cherry trees, their fruit and blossoms, and the various festivals held in honor of their blooming from the park where they were sitting to London and Tokyo. If there was any theme at all running through this jumbled discourse, it was that cherry blossom seasons the world over were very, very short. And that it was difficult to tell when they were going to peak until it had already happened and the blossoms were starting to fall.</p><p>By the time Reid resigned in the face of what would inevitably be mate in four, Gideon had heard enough to understand the problem. No young woman had been mentioned, but she didn't need to be. It didn't take a genius or a profiler to see that Reid was vexed not only by his inability to share his own feelings with to object of his desire, never mind gauging hers; but also because he didn't feel confident in his ability to maneuver through the social niceties of courtship without making a wrong move and destroying his chance at happiness.</p><p>Poor kid. He was peerless in every sense of the word. He'd been the wrong age for everything he'd ever done academically and professionally. There was no one his age who was on his level. In theory, that should matter less now that he was an adult, but it didn't seem to. Behavioral patterns established in childhood could be difficult to impossible to break. It was like Mark Twain had said, it's not the things we don't know, but the things we know that just ain't so.</p><p>Gideon knew enough about Spencer Reid's background to know that his profound self-doubt in the romantic sphere of life was almost inevitable. Between being a ten to twelve year-old kid in a high school full of teenagers and still a boy among men at CalTech were there could be no female so homely that she would fail to attract a dozen highly qualified suitors, he had formed the untrue, but to his mind no doubt, soundly reasoned hypothesis that what he had to offer, no woman in the world could really be looking for.</p><p>That being the case, there might not have been anything anyone could say to help him until he either unlearned that for himself or met a woman who was persistent enough to teach him. Still, “You're young,” Gideon observed. “You have a lot of cherry blossom festivals ahead of you. The trees are gonna bloom when they're gonna bloom. All you can do is try to be ready when it happens.”</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>Weeks continued to go by, and Spencer found himself watching JJ more and more for these signs or signals Morgan claimed he kept seeing. Or for definitive evidence to the contrary for that matter. He never could quite make up his mind if he was seeing either or both or neither. She was always warm and kind to him, but she was pretty much like that with everybody, the same way Garcia was flirty and silly with everyone without meaning much by it at all, at least in most cases.</p><p>She hung out with the team, same as any of them, having a few together at their favorite watering hole, certainly not every night but often enough. She was good at trivia and darts and encouraged his love of magic. As the summer wore on, he began to stop thinking of her as an unapproachably beautiful woman and to think of her instead as his friend JJ, who just happened to be an ethereally beautiful woman. His 'feelings' for her didn't really mean anything, he decided, except that he was a man and had eyes.</p><p>And whatever Morgan thought; he knew that when she held the elevator for him even though he was still fifty yards away, made sure he had a ride home from the bar, offered to split a cab, asked if he had anything that needed dropped off at the post office since she was going there anyway, or made coffee for both of them without being asked; she was just looking out for him. Big-brother-sister-mothering him like every friend or mentor he had ever had.</p><p>But then, sometimes, she seemed to arrange to do so much of her work in the bullpen area where his desk was instead of in her own office that it felt like she must be genuinely craving his company. And she would sit on the edge of his desk (not Morgan's) and talk to him about anything he wanted to talk about, even if she did tease him a bit about knowing things 'normal' people like she and Morgan didn't understand.</p><p>And she called him 'Spence', the casualness of which, especially in an office that worked mostly on a last-name basis, where even his best friends called him 'Reid', felt strikingly intimate. And then too, once in a great while, assuming he wasn't imagining it, when they would brush against each other in the narrow galley of the jet, or their fingers would touch in the process of transferring cup or a pin or a file, he could have sworn he saw a light in her eyes that was warm, tender, and affectionate without being the least bit motherly at all.</p>
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<a name="section0007"><h2>7. It's a Fool Who Looks for Logic in the Chambers of the Human Heart</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills. </p><p>       ~ Arthur Schopenhauer</p>
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    <p>“So what's the deal with you and Reid?” JJ blinked at Garcia in surprise. She was just so casual about it, sitting here amongst all her sleek electronics and fuzzy knickknacks, sly but none-the-less friendly smile half forming at the corners of her mouth. No one in White Collar would have ever asked such a pointed question about her personal life. Especially on the tricky and, in most units, taboo subject of taking a romantic interest in another team member.</p><p>Reminding herself that the question was clearly a good-faith attempt at comradery and nothing more, JJ conjured a smile of her own and playfully turned the question around, "What's the deal with you and Morgan?"</p><p>Garcia laughed. "Still establishing the backstory to our future life of wedded bliss. He wants me, he just doesn't know it yet." And with that, they moved back to the much more comfortable topic of the latest gruesome series of murders to be solved and how lost all the men they worked with (not for) would be without their behind the scenes contributions to the hunt for the current monster of the week.</p><p>After nearly five months, JJ was still getting used to the paradoxically more professionally intense and personally relaxed culture at the BAU. Everyone seemed more friendly. More supportive. More <em>themselves</em>. And if that meant people asking you about your personal life, at least they were direct about it, and pretty good at taking it in stride when you didn't give any kind of meaningful answer.</p><p>The reason her former coworkers would never have asked her if she had the hots for the guy in the next cubical wasn't that they didn't like to pry, or judge, or gossip. On the contrary, those were their favorite pastimes. They expected you to share all the minutia of your life voluntarily, and when you didn't, that was probable cause to assume that you had something sinister, or at least abnormal, to hide. Which was especially uncomfortable in JJ's case, since it happened to be true.</p><p>Every time she didn't have a lot to say in response to everyone gushing about their weekend plans with their kids or other halves or BFFs or pets, she would get a look. And every Monday, if she dared to venture into the break room for coffee, her failure to reciprocate tales of cub scout meetings, romantic picnics, and endless hunts for stylish yet sensible shoes would be met with sharp asides and little 'jokes' about her aloof and possibly superior nature.</p><p>By the time she'd left, It had gotten to the point that if anyone so much as asked JJ how she was doing, someone would pipe up and say “that's Classified” and everyone would smirk if not actually laugh, leaving her with no better option than to smile and nod and pretend she found the joke as funny as everyone else seemed to. Because no way was she about to tell them that she'd spent her weekend the way she always did, hooking up with guys in bars or online and calling in one of her two or three old reliable booty calls on those occasions when the man of the moment ran screaming from the sight of exactly what she had to offer. Trying to pack enough sex into two days and three nights to get her through another stressful work week.</p><p>It had been bad enough back home in Pennsylvania. In some ways, maybe worse. It was a small town and people talked. Nothing could ever really be kept secret, no matter how hard you tried. Every ex, every date that got as far as third base (which they usually did) was one more witness, one more wellspring of rumor and innuendo, until there came a point at which layer upon layer of rumor hardened into known fact, like sandstone at the bottom of a river.</p><p>She'd been more famous among Pennsylvanian adolescents than the kid from Allentown who had four nipples in two neat rows like a little pig. It had gotten to the point that boys would ask her out just to see <em>it </em>for themselves. And it had also gotten around that as long as you were willing to do more than look, here was one girl who was willing to overlook your motives and intentions to get what she wanted.</p><p>That was just part of it, some said. <em>It</em> made her as much a guy as a girl in some ways. Either that or she was sadly overcompensating for being too deformed to get a date except on such demeaning terms, proving she was girl enough to wanted for one thing at least.</p><p>But at least people there had been used to her, and liked her, and made allowances for whatever it was they thought she was. And she had always had her team. On or off the soccer field, with them, JJ had always been just one of the girls. Their friendships were bedrock, unshakable. Proof that she could be wanted for something other than sex and novelty.</p><p>Until she had gotten a full-ride scholarship to college and none of them had. And then she was a freak again. There were even a couple of angry team parents who came right out and said it. <em>Why is somebody like that even allowed to compete in girls sports!?! How is that fair? </em>As if the appendage in question were somehow going to stretch into a third leg and help her knock the ball into the goal at some crucial moment.</p><p>Ever since then, JJ had found it hard to make female friends. And even when she did, she knew that there was only so much she could safely share with them. Over the past few months, Penelope Garcia had found a way into her heart, strung up a large neon pink 'Best Friends Forever' banner and made herself at home. She had made JJ feel at home for the first time in forever. That she was needed and appreciated at the BAU in a way she hadn't been anywhere else for a very long time.</p><p>But that still didn't mean she could be trusted to know the peculiar secrets of her friend's sexual anatomy and still continue to think of her in the same way. For all her show of sexual bravado, it also didn't mean that Garcia was ready to know JJ's other, and as far as she knew, unrelated secret. Which was the fact that she craved and needed sex like food, and nearly as often.</p><p>Even now, in the twenty-first century, the only scandal-proof way for a respectable professional woman to feed such an appetite was to contract a monogamous relationship with an equally insatiable partner. Which probably wouldn't have worked in her case, JJ thought, even if she could have found the right person. She had tried before, and failed consistently. By cheating, and by seeing red when they did the same.</p><p>JJ just wasn't a monogamous person. She was capable of resisting particular men if she put her mind to it. She had an almost perfect record of saying 'no' to married men, professors, coaches, and coworkers. Most of the time, even if her attraction to a specific person was strong, she could deal with it by having sex with someone else instead. She could deny what she wanted, get what she needed, and call it a night.</p><p>And then there were those exceptional exceptions. Men who sparked something more in her than lustful fascination. Those few and far between guys who delighted you and made you long to be near them. To hear their voice. To witness their sharp minds and warm heart in action. Most recently and most especially, there was Dr. Spencer Reid.</p><p>The way he made her feel! It was like being twelve years old and liking the shy guy who was either terrified of you or in love with you and not knowing enough to know which, or that it could be both. At least once a day, she would catch him staring or vice versa and one or both or them would blush and look away. But whenever she came and sat down on the edge of his desk to listen to him talk about work, or science, or statistics, or whatever; he was always very eager for her to stay.</p><p>His childlike vulnerability, the strange aura of carefully preserved innocence with which he walked through the world of shocking pain and depravity that made up the BAU's caseload, was part of the attraction. JJ realized that even if she couldn't quite make sense of it. When it came to pure sex for it's own sake, she liked her men to be men, and the manlier the better. But with Reid, there seemed to be a sort of paradox.</p><p>Even though he was twenty three, only a couple of years younger than JJ, Reid was still a 'child prodigy'. It only took a conversation or two to know that that was how he defined himself, and always had. But while he had been distracted with the toil and excitement of packing more than thirty years worth of education and research into less than twenty years time, the 'boy genius' had grown into a tall, strong, attractive man, apparently without noticing.</p><p>There was some drive inside JJ's heart, some motive that was somehow both sexual and maternal, and yet, so childlike itself, that wanted very, very much to point out those wonderful changes to Spencer in <em>such</em> exquisite detail. Not to 'make a man of him', but to show him that he already was one. Somehow, it felt like this would be the answer, the solution of the problem that was JJ. The piece that made everything else fit.</p><p>Realistically, of course, that was nonsense. Anything that happened between her and Reid would get back to Morgan and thence to Garcia and through her to the rest of the FIB and half the U.S. Marshals in a matter of minutes. Years of carefully built up walls between her personal and professional life would come tumbling down. And even if that disaster could be avoided, what would happen to the team when he wanted to be a 'real' couple and she didn't? Or worse, agreed to try it for his sake, then inevitably ended up in someone else's bed within weeks or at most months?</p><p>JJ knew all of this. She had turned it every which way in her mind and seen that there was no way around any of it. But when Spencer popped his head into Garcia's lair and told her with serious, sad eyes that Hotch was ready to be briefed on Seattle. Whatever it was that twisted and fluttered in her stomach was equally clear and undeniable. And it was getting tired of being denied.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Mighty Warrior</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>And Gideon came to Jordan and passed over, he and the ... men that were with him, faint yet pursuing them.<br/>~Judges 8:4</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Look," Aaron told Morgan firmly, now that they were alone in his office. "I understand your concerns. I have concerns. But the fact is, I don't see any way around it. It had to happen sooner or later; we just have to hope he's finally ready."</p><p>"Well I see a way around it!" Morgan all but shouted, "We go without him and do this ourselves like we have every case for the last six months, that's the way around it!" Clearly, he too felt free to be more frank without Reid and JJ looking on.</p><p>Aaron let Morgan rage and complain and worry out loud just a little more. It was part of his process. At the first lull, he interjected soberly, "You know things can't keep on like they have been. We're stretched so thin we're barely fining time to advise on cases we should be handling in person, and that's with JJ working through the backlog faster than I ever thought possible.</p><p>"Meanwhile, we've only been approved to hire one knew agent, and even if we had three or four, that's still no substitute for thirty years of experience. Rossi won't do it, and he'd be crazy to. Besides, with Gideon already on the payroll, this is the only way to get an experienced profiler and a new agent instead of settling for one or the other."</p><p>Morgan glared at him in sullen but subdued frustration, mad that he didn't have much of a counter argument to make. Aaron didn't blame him. For all they knew, this case might be the thing that pushed Jason Gideon over the edge from barely together enough to be of some use by teaching and consulting to locked in a padded cell or at least hiding in his cabin for the rest of his life pretending bird watching was his true calling. Aside from the grave loss that would be to the Bureau, it was a lot to ask of a man in one lifetime.</p><p>Gideon had given enough to this job. He'd gone from the person young agents wanted to be like to the person they were worried they would end up like: living alone, estranged from his family, obsessing day and night over killers and rapists of the past, present, and future, little room in his life for rest, let alone peace or joy. He carried a sadness with him that never went away. Sometimes it felt contagious. No wonder Morgan wasn't chomping at the bit to get back out in the field with Gideon.</p><p>As if reading his thoughts, Morgan made the next obvious point, "How do we even know he'll agree to come? How do we know he'll be any help if he does?"</p><p>Aaron ignored the second question. Obviously, there was no knowing how Gideon would perform in the field when the pressure was on, but just the five hours of his time they'd be getting on the plane would be more help than having Sherlock Holmes show up in the flesh to walk the crime scene. Gideon was still Gideon. He might never have the confidence to lead the team again, but his wisdom and insight were still priceless. Even Morgan had to realize that.</p><p>Instead, Aaron confined his answer to the first question, "I may not have thirty year in like Jason Gideon, but I've been doing this for a while now. I think I can manage to profile a man I've been working with for almost a decade."</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>When Gideon saw what Hotch came at him with, he was impressed. An hour earlier, he would have said that he was no where near ready to go back into the field, that he might never be, that teaching and consulting were the ways in which he could be of the most use to the Bureau. But Hotch had sent the kid in first to soften him up, to introduce him to the case and let him get invested in it before he could realize what was being asked of him and get his defenses up.</p><p>Then Hotch and Morgan had shown up at his office to deliver the old one-two punch in person; a victim's innocent smile to the heart followed swiftly by an unsub's irresistibly arrogant taunt to the head. Finally the coup de grace, "the order came from the Director," which Gideon knew full well only meant that Hotch had felt strongly enough about bringing him on board to ask the Director to order him to do it.</p><p>What was he supposed to say to that? I can't because I'm a coward? I won't because it's hard? Let her die because I'm too tired to care any more? Not with young Dr. Reid, the kid he's spent years recruiting only to abandon within months, staring right at him with those big, innocent, worried eyes and saying "Looks like medical leaves over boss," fully expecting him to take up his bed and walk.</p><p>Rossi's last protege had learned well from him. Gideon almost could have smiled, but not quite, as he replied, "Then I guess we'd better get started." What else was there to say.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>Barely a word was spoken in the car on the way to the airport. It was late and they were all tired, but that wasn't the reason. Morgan drove with his eyes trained steadfastly forward as if he were at the wheel of a taxi or a ride share. It was no secret what he thought about Gideon's fitness for duty, no matter how hard they all pretended that it was. Reid didn't know what to say in the face of that, and apparently neither did Gideon.</p><p>Hotch wasn't riding with them. He followed in a separate vehicle accompanied by the latest Interim Section Chief to step in for Erin Strauss during the three months she herself had been on medical leave with a mysterious, recurrent, illness of her own. Reid stopped in the process of boarding the plane to watch the two of them talking quietly together until a look from Gideon told him to let it go and keep moving. After all, it was Gideon, not Reid they were talking about.</p><p>Once they were in the air, everything felt a little more normal. Better than normal. Like old times. Everyone slipped into their previous roles in the discussion and debate about the case as if Gideon had never been gone at all, as if he were still the boss, and not in-name-only. If their were times when Morgan in particular clearly wanted to question that, at least he kept them to himself for the duration of the flight.</p><p>When Hotch and Gideon moved a few seats away to talk, as privately as was possible in those close quarters, about a promising applicant for the open seat on the team that they hoped to take the measure of while in Seattle, Reid quickly thought of something else to talk about before Morgan could 'subtly' intimate than Gideon shouldn't be there or needed keeping an eye on. "I hope JJ is alright," he said, voicing the first non-case-related thought on his mind. JJ had started coughing so hard during the initial briefing on Seattle that Hotch had insisted she go home and stop to see a doctor on the way. An hour later they'd been told she definitely wouldn't to make it on this trip because of a bad case of strep-throat that had given her a high fever.</p><p>Reid had a feeling he was about to regret his choice of topics when Morgan grinned at him as if he had said something very funny. "Maybe when we get back you can bring her some chicken soup and kiss it better," Morgan suggested.</p><p>Reid flushed with mild anger as well as acute embarrassment. "She has a serious bacterial infection," he pointed out a bit defensively, "not a scraped knee. Just because I care about a sick co-worker doesn't mean I want to sleep with her, or contract a dangerous disease from her either."</p><p>Morgan just smiled wider and shook his head. "Kid," he admonished his young colleague, "You might be able to fool yourself about that, but you're sure not fooling anyone else. Especially not JJ."</p><p>"I'm not trying to fool--!" Reid stopped abruptly when he noticed Hotch and Gideon had momentarily broken out of their whispering huddle to turn and stare at him, only then realizing that he had been nearly shouting. "I'm not trying to fool anyone," he hissed quietly, leaning forward and moving his face uncomfortably close to Morgan's. Especially uncomfortably, now that he had bacteria on the brain.</p><p>Hotch and Gideon went back to their discussion, their own heads nearly touching. Reid tried to change the subject to basketball, the only entirely safe subject that he knew for a fact he and Morgan were both sufficiently knowledgeable about to have a meaningful discussion. But Morgan just kept trying to bring his chances of 'scoring' with JJ back into it.</p><p>Finally, seeing no other choice, Reid had to ask himself, 'what would Jason Gideon do'. That cleared things up instantly. There was nothing to do but abandon all other topics of discussion and focus on the details of the case for the remainder of the flight.</p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Killers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>I don't want ever to be a president who is comfortable and at ease with killing people.<br/>~Barack Obama</p>
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    <p>"Hey, Garcia?" JJ stuck her head into The Lair.</p><p>"Oh my God, JJ, hi! You're back! I've been practically all alone for two days! I got like two weeks of work done and still managed to stay bored!" Garcia gushed, bubbling over with enthusiasm, and moving towards JJ as if she meant to pounce on her and hug her by force.</p><p>She checked herself, apparently not so much at JJ's look of mild dismay as prompted by a qualm of her own. "You're not still contagious, are you?" she asked, giving JJ an almost comically wary look, falling back into her swivel chair and rolling it backward several inches before up holding a pad of neon colored sticky notes before her as if it were a tiny magical germ shield.</p><p>JJ smiled and shook her head, "No, you goofball," she laughed. "The doctor said I was fine to come back after twenty-four hours on antibiotics. He only kept me off yesterday so I could get plenty of rest."</p><p>"And did you?" Garcia asked, raising an eyebrow meaningfully. For a panicked moment, JJ wondered what she knew and how she knew it. Because, although she had indeed gotten plenty of rest yesterday and the day before; this morning JJ had had to invite Hal, her single most willing backstop who happened to be passing through D.C., over for toast, coffee, and quick, urgent sex. And once again, he had managed to turn it in to a sales pitch for romantic entanglement that had, again, made her late for work.</p><p>By the end of the several seconds it took JJ to realize that not even Garcia's powers of information gathering could have caught a whiff of such an impromptu, offline tryst so quickly, Penelope was already laughing and the startled look on her face. It was a joke, apparently. About the fact that she never talked about anything resembling a love life and Garcia therefore assumed she didn't have one. It was the kind of joke that might have seemed cruel coming from anyone else, but somehow Garcia made it seem commiserative instead, two lonely single gals bonding over their aloneness.</p><p>It suited JJ just fine for her to think that. Especially if it made Garcia feel better about her own single-by-chance-not-by-choice status. And a rumor started by someone else could be a cover without being a lie. "So," JJ asked steering the subject back to work, "When are the boy's back in town? I heard they caught the guy this morning."</p><p>"Not caught," Garcia answered grimly, suddenly loosing all traces of mirth, making even her ever-sparkling eyes seem to dim, "killed." She seemed genuinely saddened by the fact.</p><p>JJ looked at her friend in puzzlement. She knew Garcia was a vegetarian, but still, this was a serial killer they were talking about, and a rapist to boot. Unless her sadness was for someone else. Inevitably her mind went to Reid. "Which one of them...?" she started to ask, imaging poor Spencer having to deal with something like that, not sure if he would bear up or buckle under. An instant later, she remembered Gideon had been with them as well, and also possibly in a state of emotional frailty.</p><p>"Oh, no," Garcia rushed to reassure her, seeming slightly relieved herself. "Not one of our guys, not yet anyway, although, she might--and if--well we may not be able to call them 'the boys' much longer." And with that they were back on solid ground, off and running on the topic of their possible new colleague. A woman in the profiler's club for the first time in quite a while. If it continued to bother Garcia that the agent in question had killed a man (of sorts) this morning, she certainly didn't show it.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>"Listen, Jason," Hotch argued quietly, calmly (but the kind of calm that has to work at it) <em>patiently</em>, "Even without considering the impressive work she's done these last few days, everyone in the Seattle office tells me Greenaway is the best they've seen in years. And I trust them completely. If you'll just let me bring her out to Quantico..."</p><p>"I didn't say she wasn't a good agent," Gideon clarified, gesturing for the younger agent to hold his peace and listen a moment. "I said she was a killer. Now don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate the fact that Vogel is dead and I'm not, and, sure, I admit you need a killer or two on a team like this, but we have three already: you, me... Morgan" he added with a slight nod in the general direction of the cockpit, where the aforementioned agent had gone to get better acquainted with the young, female copilot he had met briefly before takeoff.</p><p>Gideon could see Hotch chafed at the 'killer' characterization, even though he tried hard not to show it, even though there was really no denying it with his particular military background, or his record with the Bureau for that matter. It was amazing sometimes how much energy human beings were willing to waste avoiding the acknowledgment of simple facts. And how likely even the smartest people were to miss the whole point of a conversation while doing do.</p><p>Gideon kept his voice patient, and he hoped reassuring, as he tried to explain his concern about Greenaway in terms Hotch was willing to understand. "Look, you're a lawyer. No matter how far you get from the U.S. Attorney's office in miles or years, you'll always be a lawyer. Nothing wrong with that. Look at the way you were able to twist an authorization to hire a Media Specialist into hiring a full SSA with the potential to be talented profiler, and start her at GS-11, no less, very skillful. Planning ahead, using the rules to your advantage. It's what lawyers do.</p><p>"You're a sniper and a lawyer; I'm a soldier and a psychologist; Morgan's a cop and an athlete; the kid's an engineer and a chemist and the devil knows what else. You don't stop being any of those things. They're how you do whatever you do. You get a lot of killers on a team, maybe you get a team that does a lot of killing; that's all I'm saying. So, maybe we don't need another killer on the team right now, that's all."</p><p>Hotch looked up over Gideon's shoulder, "Can I help you?" he asked, in a way that would have sounded pleasant and professional to a stranger but which Gideon (who knew him as well as anyone, including himself) recognized as rather pointed. Gideon turned his head slightly to find Reid standing behind him--far enough from the door to the john to make it clear her had emerged some time ago-- looking mildly embarrassed.</p><p>"I didn't mean to... pry..." Reid mumbled sheepishly, exhaling a small, nervous laugh as he appeared to grope uncertainly for the right verb, glancing down at his feet before purposefully forcing his gaze upward. "It's just... Talking about whether a person is a killer is... it's like asking if a dog bites. It's a dog, of course it bites, even if it hasn't bitten anyone yet."</p><p>Here Reid involuntarily formed an uncertain, self-deprecating half smile, the one he used when he was actually not so much uncertain as embarrassed to be certain and to seem forceful or zealous because of it, looking both men square in the hands. "I mean," he turned to address Gideon specifically, "didn't you tell me yourself you hadn't even been in a fist fight before you were selected at random for military service? They essentially drew your name out of a hat and put a gun in your hand. That's not exactly indicative of an inherent quality, unless it's a quality of practically everyone whose name went in the hat."</p><p>Gideon nodded acknowledgment, then spread his hand and tilted his head side to side as he weighed and measured this obvious statement of fact regarding his own history and the history of millions of other men of his generation; pondering it, letting it sink in, trying to find the proper place for it in his analysis of the situation. What Reid had said about him and about draftees in general was true, but he wasn't sure it meant what the kid thought it meant. He still felt a qualitative distinction to exist between someone like Reid and someone like himself--something essential if not necessarily inherent--though he wasn't quite as sure as he had been a moment ago what it was. </p><p>Meanwhile, Hotch and Reid had had a brief discussion of the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and that other one where the man in white the lab coat tells you to electrocute a screaming victim in the next room, and were back to discussing the unique qualities SSA Greenaway brought to the table as a potential new member of the team. Reid waxed eloquent about crime victim demographics and the value of having a woman in the room when discussing victimology, as well as the nearly one in six serial killers who were actually female.  Hotch was on again about the Chief of the Seattle Field Office being an excellent judge of character, as if that were the point.</p><p>Gideon held his peace regarding the next BAU agent for the rest of the flight. He had said what he had to say to the person whose opinion really mattered. This was Hotch's team now, not his, even if the people deciding that hadn't quite decided it yet. He had failed as a leader and irreparably damaged the trust his superiors had once had in him. They were only willing to have him back as a profiler because they were that desperate and Hotch had vouched for him.</p><p>And as the de facto Unit Chief, Hotch clearly had his heart set on Elle Greenaway to take the place of the one of their two fallen comrades the bean counters at the DOJ and OIG had seen fit to replace. The last thing a new Unit Chief needed was backseat managing from an old timer who didn't know the difference between experience and authority. Gideon's job now was to support Hatch and to follow the team where his leadership took it. Who knew? Maybe his concerns would prove unfounded. It had happened once or twice before.</p>
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<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Did You Make a Wish?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Willow: "Hey how's with you and Riley. You two seemed pretty snugly after class"<br/>Buffy: "See above re: talk all talk"<br/>Willow: "Do I have to tie you two together?"<br/>Buffy: "We almost, but..."<br/>Willow: "Well, get with it - I need my vicarious smoochies."<br/>~BtVS 4.10</p>
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    <p>Trick candles. Of course they were tick candles. Everyone born in the the last week of October or the first week of April is familiar with 'hilarious joke' of a birthday cake covered in candles you can't blow out so that there is no fair way of deciding if you get your wish or not and no way to look other than lame. What Spencer never was quite sure of was what to do about it.</p><p>It was hard to know which made you look or feel lamer, quitting or trying. Not that it matter much in this hat, but he was wearing it. Being a good sport. That was the difference between being the object of a friendly prank and the asshole who had no friends because he couldn't take a joke. He'd learned that much in twenty-four years anyway.</p><p>If he'd have started calmly pulling them all out and dropping them in his coffee to douse the magnesium based fuses without being 'gotten' at all, it would have spoiled everyone's fun. That didn't stop him from feeling a bit chagrined, a bit as if he really had been 'gotten' when JJ sated the obvious. "They're trick candles, Spence, okay? They're gonna come back on every time."</p><p>Still not able to decide in that moment to give it up, not in the midst of this simultaneously warm and confusing feeling of hearing the casually intimate way she said his name, which made something inside of him flutter in a way only girls and not men were allowed to talk about feeling; Spencer blew out one last mighty breath. For an instant, he felt he'd reclaimed a sort of victory by getting them all out at the same time, if only for a moment, until he realized what Morgan had just said to him in that moment. "Awe, Mommy to the rescue."</p><p>"Mommy!?" he cried out in belated shock, taken aback and very slightly stung by this characterization of JJ's supposed affection for him, particularly from the one person in the room who knew of his very grown up feelings about her and claimed to believe they were mutual. The very idea--both the infantilization part and the... other part--was uncomfortable to say the least. But, Spencer reminded himself, even this was still intended as being 'all in good fun' and not as serious mockery.</p><p>The way Morgan pushed the hat down on his head, very much like any bully would, didn't help matters; but Spencer had faith in their friendship and managed not to feel terribly slighted, just slightly overwhelmed by too much attention from three people standing much too close to him, surrounding him exactly as if they had been a large crowd. As soon as he could find the slightest excuse, he sprung from his chair and thoughtlessly, instinctively sought out Gideon. In doing so, he was keenly but helplessly aware that he felt very much like a young child seeking out their mother in a sea of unfamiliar faces.</p><p>Gideon at least, understood how Spencer was feeling and managed to empathize without trying to make him 'feel better', without dismissing his discomfort or making him feel like an object of pity for it. Even just a minute of that quiet support made him feel better able to face a small crowd of friends insisting that he must 'have fun' on his birthday, rather than ignoring it as was his usual habit. And when JJ called his name again, called him 'Spence' again, playfully trying to tempt him back with a piece of cake; he felt that flutter inside again, and couldn't rush to her side fast enough.</p><p>He tried to communicate this to Gideon without communicating it to him, more or less in apology for his abrupt parting. "You know she's the only person in the whole world who calls me 'Spence'." Once he'd said it out loud, it sounded like a phenomenal non sequitur. He laughed nervously, his face slightly pink with embarrassment, unable to read Gideon's expression. Whether he understood or not, that was as much time as he could spare for the sake of courtesy. He couldn't pass up the invitation to, once more, be much too close to JJ within that tiny crowd of friends, which made their proximity seem entirely reasonable.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>"So," Garcia teased over the speaker phone as JJ quickly changed clothes in her office, making double use of the short time until the team had to be at the airport for the latest murder spree in sunny So. Cal., having only gotten home from another long journey that morning, still in the clothes they had slept in, "did you give Reid a happy, happy birthday?"</p><p>Garcia's voice was heavy with implication and amusement, but JJ ignored that. "Maybe the hat was too much," she said, pensively. "I think I might have embarrassed him. Although he did seem happy with the cake. Thank you for picking that up, by the way, I had no idea we'd still be in the air." She left out the way his ears had turned red when Morgan had called her his 'mommy'. She didn't exactly know what to do with that or the contradictory feeling of protectiveness, annoyance, and more-than-half-ashamed lust that she had felt in that moment.</p><p>"Are you going to make it up to him tonight?" Garcia persisted. "I could 'accidentally' cause a mix-up with your online reservations and put you in the same room."</p><p>JJ sighed. Maybe talking to Garcia about this at all was a mistake. "I'm not trying to bone Reid," she insisted, sounding overly strident even in her own ears. "I just thought it would be nice if we were the kind of office where you know your among friends and they bring you cake on your birthday."</p><p>"Well, couldn't we just pretend you're considering it?" Garcia half begged and half teased, "Even my vicarious love life has hit a dry spell. I could use a little something to give me hope, an impossible possibility of love, even for someone else."</p><p>JJ couldn't help laughing at that. "Why don't we pretend you're on the verge of giving Morgan a happy birthday instead," she tossed right back.</p><p>"Tuché" Garcia admitted, heaving a theatrical sigh. "Call me when you get back in town and we'll go out and have a drink to celebrate watching our lonely barren lives pass us by."</p><p>"Hey, listen," JJ said abruptly I've got to let you go. She couldn't explain further, so she didn't. She just hung up without waiting for a response, anxious to get off the phone before Garcia could hear in her voice that sudden, familiar feeling of being stabbed in the heart by a thoughtless word.</p><p>Of course, Garcia had not meant anything by that hateful adjective, 'barren'. She couldn't have, she didn't even know. Besides, no one said 'barren' and actually meant it anymore unless they were talking about a blasted lifeless landscape like Antarctica or Mars; which, knowing Garcia, probably meant that she was making some obscure pop culture reference that she just expected everyone to know.</p><p>Infertile. That was the word these days. Technically, the doctor hadn't even said that. Sub-fertile, he had said, and even that qualified with false hope. <em>Of course there is no way of knowing for sure, but most often, patients with this condition tend to be sub-fertile.</em> He'd said that to her mother, like she wasn't there or couldn't understand, like she was two and not eleven.</p><p>Her mother had said something about things happening the way they were supposed to happen and never brought up the subject again at all. But JJ had taken enough reckless (and maybe more than reckless) chances in high school and college to know that she wasn't likely to get pregnant accidentally, on purpose, or accidentally-on-purpose; if not at sixteen, then at twenty-six even less so. Which was yet one more reason not to get involved with a sweet, brilliant, gentle-hearted young man who would certainly make the child of some lucky mommy a very good father some day.</p>
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<a name="section0011"><h2>11. I Thought You'd Never Ask</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>“Sometimes we can make our own opportunities, sometimes we can see them coming, but more often than not they are like pop quizzes, they are sprung on you like a challenge to test your skills, almost like a dare to see if you can take that leap of faith to make whatever it is a success. Wait too long, and an excellent opportunity might slip away.”<br/>― E.A. Bucchianeri</p>
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    <p>Gideon held the tickets in his right hand, tapping them against his left, and stared at the phone on his desk as if he expected it to ring. Which was ridiculous. He was the one with something to say. To someone who, chances were, didn't want to hear his voice never mind going to a ball game with him 'like old times'. Stupid. That's what it was, the stupidest idea he had ever had.</p><p>What if he had called his son out of the blue and, against all odds, found that Steven was not only willing to talk to him but delighted to take a Sunday afternoon out of his life and hang out with Dear Old Dad at the 'Skins game? The way they had always meant to, if it hadn't been for all the time he spent working instead. Probably all that would have happened was that he'd be called in on a case, leaving Steven alone at the ball park remembering why he had quit speaking to his father in the first place. He might still be working <em>this</em> case, for that matter.</p><p>Gideon shook his head at his own absurdity, stuck the tickets back in his shirt pocket and finished gathering up his things for the flight to California. If the tickets has been cheaper, he might have thrown them away, but he had sprung for the 'Dream Seats', which he assumed was some kind of box situation. Pathetic. He must have been dreaming to think that such a gesture would go any ways at all towards repairing a relationship that he had neglected for so long that he doubted there was anything there to fix.</p><p>He'd have given the tickets to Reid for his birthday, if he'd had any reason to believe the kid knew what football was, or cared. That being the case, he'd be hard pressed to explain why he was giving him two tickets and not going with him. There was no way he could possibly admit the real reason he had bought them, let alone explain that the idea taking Reid to the game <em>instead</em> of Steven seemed like some obscure form of infidelity. It wouldn't have taken a profiler to see how unhealthy that view of the situation was, but that didn't change his feelings about.</p><p>As he shrugged into his jacket and shouldered his go bag, Gideon decided there would either be enough time to find a home for the tickets after they slapped the cuffs on this 'Tommy' character or there wouldn't. No sense getting hung up on the least important part of what made buying them a total waste. Surely there was a least one fan on the team that would be willing to take them, assuming they were back in town by Sunday.</p><p>Gideon stepped out into the hallway and almost literally ran into Elle. The way she apologized and blushed just a little, even though he had stepped into her path gave him an uneasy feeling, just for a moment that she might be interested in him. She always did seem to prick up her ears a little more than most of the team when he told his war stories, and she treated him more like a colleague and less like an extra supervisor than anyone on the team besides Hotch.</p><p>But that was nonsense and he knew it, and thank God. The last thing his miserable excuse for a personal life needed was to drag someone else into it and make her just as miserable. A vibrant young woman like that had no reason to be interested in a man of his advanced age and mediocre appearance even if he hadn't been the office sad-sack.</p><p>Elle smiled awkwardly. Her needless apologies and gracious acceptance of his had passed and it was now his turn to say something. "Do you like football?" he asked as they continued down the hallway to meet up with the rest of the team at the elevators.</p><p>Elle laughed lightly and shook her head, hazel eyes sparkling. "Not unless you mean soccer," she said. He told her about the tickets, there existence, nothing more. "I know Morgan likes football," Elle mused, considering he possibilities, "but he hates the D.C. team. He's a Bears fan. JJ might want them, I hear she's a huge fan."</p><p>Gideon nodded, "I'll give it some thought," he answered turning slightly cryptic as they turned the corner and met up with the rest of the group. And he was giving it quite a bit of thought. Anyone with eyes could see that the two youngest members of the team had spent the last year dancing around each other like birds instinctively locked in some kind of dysfunctional mating ritual, each longing desperately for the other to make the first move. Maybe if the football tickets weren't <em>just</em> football tickets, they might make a decent birthday gift after all.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>"The Red... Skins?" Spencer peered at the two virtually identical pieces of card stock, almost as puzzled by the items themselves as by the fact that Gideon had gotten him a birthday present in the first place, complete with paper and ribbon, just as if it had, in deed, been intended all along. This though giving such a gift was something so unusual for Gideon as to make his claim that it had slipped mind implausible to say the least. A present no only worth giving but worth lying about?</p><p>Clearly there was something important he was missing about these tickets. Tickets. Tickets to what? Football, as Gideon was quick to explain, which did not at all explain the name on the tickets, which could not have possibly meant... Except that it clearly did, because it was written all as one word and the logo featured a Native American man with braids and feathers.</p><p>Spencer laughed a little nervously. How could he have lived in D.C. for two years and not known that the city had an NFL team with a racial slur for a mascot? Worse, Gideon kept saying it, clearly totally unaware that it could be considered offensive or that it had any meaning outside the world of pro sports. Which was jarring and caused Spencer to lag a little behind the point of what he was trying to get at.</p><p>Maybe that's why he was so taken by surprise when Gideon finally revealed the point of the tickets, like a magician making something appear to materialized from thin air that had actually been there all along. He'd been half expecting Gideon to suggest that he take Morgan to the game, wondering why all the mystery about it, when his mentor instead identified the 'Skins fan' in question as "the only person in the whole world who calls you Spence."</p><p>For a moment, Spence felt an odd, giddy sensation of hopeful panic rising in his chest, "JJ?" he all but stammered.... or okay he did stammer just a little. "Wh--what should I say?" Gideon favored him with a look of silent confidence and support, clearly signaling that he doubted it would be a problem.</p><p>The truth splashed Spencer in the face like a bucket of ice water. Morgan was right! This thing he felt about JJ did go both ways, and everyone did know about it. Everyone but Spencer and JJ. Elle had tried to tell him so just yesterday, <em>You ever ask anyone out? ... That's why you can't get a date. </em></p><p>Spencer smiled. This feeling he was feeling wasn't panic at all. His nervousness was from excitement, from hope. For the first time in a long time, he was willing to believe that their was a least a pretty good chance that asking JJ out would lead not to rejection, not to a pity offer to go with him 'as a friend' but to an actual date.</p><p>Spencer felt almost weightless, as if, if he really wanted to, he could step right out of the plane and fly. As he turned to make his move before going, a courtesy that was second nature to him after more than twenty years of playing the game; Spencer saw something he must have been blind not to have seen before. "Check mate," he declared, half proud and half embarrassed to realize that his inability to best his only available father figure at chess had really been more psychological than strategic all along.</p>
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<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Life Could Be a Dream</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Either one does not dream, or one does so interestingly. One should learn to spend one's waking life in the same way: not at all, or interestingly.</p><p>~ Friedrich Nietzsche</p>
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    <p>
  <em>Bliss. There is no other word for it. Tangled up with her in a swirl of limbs and sweat, ethereal and carnal all at once. This is where his life has always been going, from the primordial ooze to the last fall into the Sun. He moves inside her and she cries out, "Hey, Einstein, I'm over here!" </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Her voice is far away and harsh, mocking. His eyes are open and she looks down on him from a great height like a queen on a throne. She is Alexa and Hannah, but also others. Tall and blond and impossibly beautiful, bold, and strong. She is fourteen and eighteen, and older, always older, just beyond his reach. In on some secret the Universe is keeping from him.</em>
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  <em>Suddenly, and yet all along, an impossible number of arms are holding him down. His blindfold tightens as if of it's own accord until his eyes bulge against it as if they might pop. The jeering mob of older boys and girls tear his clothes from him, leaving him naked in the face of her nose-crinkling contempt. His tiny, shriveled dick is exposed to the cold, dry wind of the desert night, rubbing him raw like a sand blaster. Feet kick and stomp him from all directions, even from below. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He is not on the ground now. He is high in the air: bound to a goalpost; lashed to the masts of his storm tossed ship by impossibly strong restraints that cut into his skin as the sirens lying song cuts into his brain making him long for an embrace that he knows will mean his death but longs for all the same. </em>
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  <em>"Honestly, Spencer, your such a mess." His mother's voice startles him from the darkness. He jerks his head up, mortified to meet her worried and ever so sightly disapproving eyes. It is a full second before he realizes that he is naked and desperately pulls up the sheet to cover himself. The sheet is damp with sweat and maybe more than sweat. His mother notices none of this. She just sits down on the edge of his bed and starts cleaning the dirt off his face with spit and Kleenex.</em>
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  <em>"Mom," Spencer whines trying to shrug her away, "you can't do that anymore. I'm a grown man!"</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Oh Honey," his mother chides him gently, "We both know that's not true. And if you keep pretending it is, you're just going to end up in the basement stuffed behind the dryer again. What do you think you're doing anyway, running around with guns in your belt? Playing cowboys and Indians? Because that's just racist."</em>
</p><p>Spencer woke suddenly and sharply. No alarm was set, because it was Sunday, but it was 7:09 in the morning, the same time he would have gotten up after hitting the snooze bar exactly once, which was what he did on most weekdays. As if he subconscious new perfectly well that today was as important as any workday, any school day in the history of his life. Something he had better not miss.</p><p>His subconscious was right. Today was the day. After an impossibly long week of waiting that had involved more shy, sidelong glances and awkward greetings on both sides than at any time since their first few days of working together, he'd be picking JJ up for a pregame brunch in just a few short hours. They'd have the whole day together. The night too if they wanted it.</p><p>For some reason, that thought made Spencer feel slightly panicked and maybe just a bit ill. He'd had bad dreams again for one thing, he knew that much. But strangely, for him, he didn't remember them clearly. Alexa Lisbin had been involved. Humiliation and betrayal at her hands and others had featured, but the details were fuzzy and confused. The obvious reason, of course, was that being so close the the mere possibility of sex let alone romance for the first time in about a year was aggravating his perennial fears of failure to preform socially and sexually.</p><p>Reid sighed. Once again he was doing what his Uncle Gordon used to call 'borrowing trouble and investing it in anxiety.' That he would make numerous social errors was a given, and the risk of having to 'perform' in any sense sexually, at this stage, was probably slim at best.</p><p>JJ might be a beautiful, fierce, formidable woman; but she was still a small-town girl with wholesome, even slightly conservative values. It wasn't like she was a college super-senior party girl or a stripper he'd met in a casino. There were still weeks worth of careful moves to be made before they could know if they would ever be together in that way.</p><p><em>Calm down</em>, Spencer told his reflection silently as he shaved. <em>It's just a date. You're not getting married. </em> Today was just about getting a little closer to JJ, spending time with her one-on-one, in the absence of criminals and corpses and meddling coworkers. There would be time for performance anxiety, he reminded himself, when he was actually in imminent danger of reaching the level of intimacy he longed to share with her.</p><p>The worst thing he could do today was to put his foot in his mouth or spill his drink on her. Spencer already knew from experience that neither of those things was enough to send her running screaming for the door. If so, they wouldn't have been as good of friends as they were already. Date or no date, she was still JJ. He just had to trust in that and try to relax.</p><p>Which was easy to say and hard to do. Especially with nearly four (suddenly very long) hours of waiting still stretching out between now and the date itself. He almost wished they <em>were </em>working today, just so he would have something to do besides imagining everything that could possibility go wrong today and in the days to follow. And maybe also because, if they were working right now, he would already be with JJ, and her calmness would be calming him down.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>"I've lost my mind," JJ declared out loud to no one in particular as she changed in and out of a crazy number of very, very different outfits: Team jersey and baggy sweats to sexy jeans that she felt ridiculous hiding under that too long jersey, which she then traded for a top that showed off the objectively hot parts of body in a way that made her feel simultaneously exposed and fraudulent, promising something upon which she would have to be insane to deliver.</p><p>There were sweaters and slacks, long and short skirts, shorts, Capris. For a moment she even thought seriously of putting on a pair of pink denim overalls that she hadn't worn since college. JJ silently interrogated every article of clothing she owned trying to determine everything it could possibly say to Spencer Reid.</p><p>The problem was, she couldn't form a coherent picture of what she wanted to say because she had no idea what she intended to do. She wanted to say touch me, but also don't touch me; to imply that they might not even be on a date, though Spencer had made it absolutely clear that that was what he was asking and what she was agreeing to. Something which could not have been easy for him to do.</p><p>The last thing she wanted was to string him along or hurt his feelings. What she <em>wanted</em>, in fact was to get her hands on his body and vice versa. She <em>wanted</em> him to fuck her senseless. But she also wanted to go to work tomorrow with a full complement of coworkers who had never seen her naked and didn't know any secrets that would make them reluctant to look her in the eye. She wanted to know when she walked into a room; if everyone suddenly stopped talking, that they weren't talking about her. Or at least, they weren't talking about <em>It</em>.</p><p><em>So your just going to be alone your whole life? </em>she could practically hear her mother asking. Was she really prepared to take a hard pass on the first spark of genuine, healthy, substantive romantic feeling to come into her life far too many years? <em>So make it a date, but don't sleep with him, dummy. </em>That's what she imagined her sister Ros might have said, in an impossible, hypothetical world in which JJ was grown enough to date while Ros was still alive, still the girl she'd known half a lifetime ago.</p><p>"You're dreaming," JJ scolded herself. There was no way she could be flirty and romantic and on-a-date with Spencer and not end up in bed with him. Her own feelings had already gone too far for that, and she knew from the way Spencer had been blushing lately (not only in the cheeks but behind the ears) every time they were anywhere near that he wouldn't be the one to put on the breaks. No one is that nervous unless they have something to be nervous about.</p><p>And sex with Spencer today would mean sharing her secrets with Spencer today. Even if certain things could be hidden by positioning and lack of light, that was no way to start something with someone you couldn't just avoid for the rest of your life if something went wrong and no way to start something that had even the slimmest chance of ever going right.</p><p>Besides, <em>It</em> wasn't her only secret. There was still, and maybe more importantly, the other thing. It would have been unspeakably cruel to go to bed with someone as sensitive and innocent as Spencer without telling him that, not only did this not mean that they were in a monogamous relationship, they never would be. Which made the very idea that they could ever start a life together, that they could let themselves fall in love and dream of side-by-side porch rockers, seem exactly as absurd as it actually was.</p><p>The Smart Move, of course, would be not to go at all.  To be 'sick' or something equally acceptable.  But somehow it seemed too late make the smart move.  The situation had already gone beyond the province of the brain.  JJ put her jeans and her jersey back on and got ready for the game.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Need Based Compulsion</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Do you know, my friend, that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desire and aptitudes?<br/>~Agatha Christie</p>
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    <p>It was kind of over the minute she saw him. When Spencer Reid turned up on JJ's doorstep at a quarter to eleven, wearing a nervous-but-hopeful smile and apologizing for being early, she was as ready to go with him as she had ever been to do anything in her life, already as tense and restless as if he had been half an hour late. Her heart was fluttering, her stomach tight. Her skin tingled.</p><p>He was wearing jeans and a maroon turtleneck that was probably the only thing he owned in one of the teams colors. Tiny golden brown curls hung down over it's high collar. He had on a wristwatch, on the outside of his sleeve, as if cell phone had yet to be invented, and a brown belt that matched his brown loafers. It was such a failed attempt at dressing down that she might have laughed, except that she could see how hard he had tried to strike the right balance between looking his best and dressing for the occasion, especially considering he'd never been to a pro football game in his life.</p><p>Besides, even from the front, he looked a thousand percent better in those jeans than in the baggy slacks she usually saw him in. The way they clung to his thighs and calves revealed a manly solidity to his admittedly very slim frame, proving his lower body was made of lean muscle, not just skin and bones. Somehow, the long, snug sleeves of his not-quite-sweater added definition to his arms that hadn't seemed quite as noticeable even when they were half exposed by one of his many plaid, short-sleeved, button-ups.</p><p>Every single part of JJ approved. She kind of wished she'd worn the more revealing top after all. Because at this point, it wasn't even a question of resisting temptation. It was just a question of approach, and of managing the consequences.</p><p>She needed to let him know that he had a green light while simultaneously making sure he knew what he needed to know to respond to that; all with a minimum of awkwardness and unpleasant surprises. And without risk of further disclosure within the Team or the Bureau.</p><p>Suddenly, Spencer let out a quiet gasp and laughed nervously. He'd been holding his breath since she opened the door, JJ realized. They both had. A sheepish sort of laugh rattled out through her nostriles and she stood back to invite him in. Spencer took another deep breath and swallowed, but he crossed her threshold, grinning from ear to ear.</p><p>"Are you ready to go?" he asked as JJ walked around him on the pretext of closing the door, taking the opportunity to confirm that his backside was just as shapely in those snug jeans as she'd imagined to would be. She was glad he couldn't see the involuntary smile of wicked mirth that choice of phrasing brought to her face.</p><p>"Whenever you are," she answered as she came around, full-circle to face him. Despite her best intentions, her tone was suggestive and Spencer blushed an breathed out something between a sigh and a laugh in response.</p><p>JJ's stomach tightened again. There was a feeling of being trapped. Both Elle and Morgan had claimed, as absurd as it seemed, that Spencer had never been on a date before, and though Elle had not presumed to suggest what that implied, Morgan had, warning JJ with far too much amusement to 'go easy on the poor kid.'</p><p>"I'm not a virgin!" Spencer blurted out, as if he had read her mind. Or as if he had a professional level of skill and training at discerning people's thoughts through their behavior. Then he flushed crimson from his forehead to his neck and added softly but fervently, earnestly. "I know Morgan thinks it's funny to tell people that."</p><p>There may have been a hint of resentment in that statement, but no more than a hint. Spenser was really far too tolerant of Morgan's teasing. As if it was merely to be expected, the price of friendship, to be the butt of constant, belittling jokes. "I never thought you were," she assured him, not sure if that was actually true or not.</p><p>For the first time, JJ wondered if Spencer had ever really had a friend who had treated him like an equal and not like a little brother. He must have been so much younger than everyone he had ever worked or studied with before coming to Quantico. Even then, he had gotten special permission to join the Academy at 22 so that he would be ready to be commissioned the minute he turned 23, something JJ hadn't even know was possible.</p><p>"Listen," she said, deciding to make a start at getting some things out in the open while everything was already as awkward as it could possibly be and couldn't get any worse. "I need you to know that I like to keep my private life and my professional life completely separate." At the look of stabbing disappointment in Spencer's eyes. she rushed to add, "So if I'm going to make an exception for you, you have to promise me one thing."</p><p>"Anything!" Spencer assured her, his face lighting up with ecstatic relief and hope.</p><p>"Whatever happens between us, today or in the future..." JJ took a deep breath, staving off panic again, "and whatever you learn about me outside of work; It has to be Top Secret, and I mean that pretty much literally. Can you understand that?"</p><p>Spencer's brow knit, his eyes showing a confusing mixture of puzzlement, concern, and restrained passion. "I--yes I can. I would never... But, JJ," here she suddenly found both her hands clasped in his as they stared into one another's eyes, "What are you so afraid of? You're terrified. Your shaking."</p><p>JJ tried to look down, but Spencer gently lifted her chin so that he could continue to look deep into her eyes. She resisted both the urge to pull away just to break his gaze or to kiss him, only half for the same reason. "There are things you don't know about me," she whispered. "I don't want to scare you off."</p><p>"Not possible," Spencer assured her, passion visibly winning the war within his eyes. They were close enough to feel one another's breath on their lips, their noses all but touching. By wordless agreement there lips met and opened to one another. It was impossible to say who initiated and who responded, their mutual need was so palpable.</p><p>They kissed at first gently, then more fervently, more deeply. Impulsively, JJ pulled Spencer hard against her, grasping and caressing his firm buttocks though those tight jeans at last. She could feel his hardening cock pressed against her body even through two layers of denim. Her own special little member swelled with desire and threatened to come untucked from it's hiding place.</p><p>This was no good, JJ realized, desperately willing herself to break away. It was too soon. He was not ready. She was not ready for him to know. Not with the difference between deep secret love and awkward, superficial friendship hanging in the balance.</p><p>~~~~~</p><p>Spencer's heart pounded. The blood rushed in his ears. He hardly noticed either. JJ was in his arms at last. They drank pleasure from one another's lips. She clasped and then kneaded his ass so possessively, so forcefully that both his heart and his cock swelled joyfully in response, and he took the liberty of doing the same.</p><p>Suddenly; so suddenly that he was sure he had somehow misread her, had offended her in spite of her at-least-equal forwardness, JJ pulled away from him, spinning on her heals to turn her face from him. "I'm sorry," Spencer whispered, as soon as he could catch his breath, "I didn't mean to move too fast... It's just... It's been a <em>year</em>."</p><p>Nodding, still shaking slightly, getting a hold of herself, JJ--as pale as he was red based on the fire he felt in his cheeks--turned to face in his general direction but could not quite look him in the eye. "I know what you mean," she said with conviction, but in a tone that made it clear she knew no such thing, that she did not take him literally. "I'm a little overdue myself," she added sheepishly, meeting his eyes at last.</p><p>That admission broke at least some of the tension between them, and they shared a quiet, mutually self-deprecating laugh. "Sooo...." said Spencer, after a moment, "brunch?"</p><p>A big smile crinkled JJ's face and put a twinkle in her eye once more. "Brunch," she agreed.</p><p>"Top Secret brunch?" he asked teasingly. Instantly, he was struck with a terror that this impishness would not be appreciated, that he had mentioned something she had meant for him to leave alone.</p><p>JJ laughed out loud. "Maybe," she agreed, "If you stop jumping like you're afraid I might bite."</p><p>Spencer felt his shoulders sag with relief. Other parts of his body and minds stirred with renewed mischief and excitement. "But what if I'm afraid you won't?" he asked.</p><p>"Relax," she assured him, "You look so tasty; I doubt if I can control my apatite much longer."</p>
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